general training guidelines

I wanted to lay down some general training guidelines that hopefully will help riders of all levels, by giving them some general principles to build a training schedule around.

It is important to realize that trials although different from any other sports still has principles that are true of all sports, if you understand these principles they can be applied to trials or any sport.

One thing to point out at the very beginning is the importance of motor skills and how they relate to sports. Your ability to learn the actual skills involved in what ever your sport is, will in most cases have more of an impact on your performance than any other factor. This may sound obviously true to most of you, but you would not believe how many athletes miss this fact. This fact is the most important aspect when it comes to designing a training program.

Basically this means, if you want to be good at any sport, the thing that will help you the most is actually doing the moves you want to be good at! In other words, nothing improves your ability to do a sport more than actually practicing that sport! So if you have a limited amount of time and you can only do one thing, practice riding…practice riding…practice riding! Nothing will improve you trials riding more than this one thing.

However, when deciding how much to ride it is important to do the amount of riding that will help you the most. At different times this will change, but there is a guideline to follow. And that guideline is to stop riding when you first start feeling tired. If you keep trying after you are tired, you are not only wasting your time, but you can actually teach your body to “unlearn” the correct way of doing the skill. Not only does this send the wrong message to your muscles, but also once you are tired, you run a greater risk of injury. I have seen a lot of athletes get hurt for no other reason than they were just to tired and they didn’t stop. Too many coaches press athletes to buckle down and keep going even when they are too tired. You can decide, do you want to train smart or do you just want to plod along no matter what, does quantity make up for a lack of quality??? For Pro level riders this means no more than two hard days a week, although they can ride every day if they want to, in most cases time off the bike will help them more than riding every day.

Just remember practice within your limits, hurt riders do not make good progress.

At some point in any sport you will find you have reached some limit physically. At this point one or more of the following will be important to you, a strength building program, cardio building activity or some type of flexibility training may be very helpful to supplement your riding. It is important to point out that most riders are not at this level. Sure being in better shape will help any one to be a better rider no matter what level they are at, but it is more often true that a higher skilled person in poor shape will beat athletes that are in much better shape.

Most people doing trials are in good enough shape to do the moves that are required to be at least an expert level rider. In other words they are not experts because they lack the skills, not because they are not strong enough, or don’t have a good enough cardiovascular fitness, or because they are not flexible enough. However, if you do find one of these areas limiting your ability to ride, supplement your riding by doing what ever you need to work on, but make sure it is supplementing your riding, not becoming the center of your focus.

At some point and for most people, it is somewhere between the expert level and the pro level riders will start to notice that they need work on some fitness aspect in order to achieve better results.

At that point the best thing to do is to find your weakness and find the safest and most effective way to improve that weakness. My experience shows that that means a strength building program that takes you less than 30 minutes ever week to start with and after a month or two it should take you less than 30 minutes ever two weeks. For cardiovascular fitness than means a program that you can do either 2 or 3 times a week and it should take you less than 15 minutes to complete. And for flexibility it would involve a program that you can do in about 5-10 minutes any where from 3-6 days a week depending on your desire.

So, a expert or pro rider doing all of this would be able to do everything in between one hour and two hours every two weeks. In other words, a very small amount of time is spent doing this, because if done right it only takes a small amount of time, and even at the pro level most of the time you get beat because the riders had better skills not because the riders had better fitness.

Some other guidelines; the better you get, the less you will need to ride, and in fact too much time riding hurts more pro riders than not riding enough does.

The reason is, as you get closer to your genetic potential, you are stressing your body, by pushing it to the limits. So you get tired quicker and it takes longer to recover. Many pro riders make the mistake of keeping their riding time the same as it always was, this leads to over training…the first signs of over training are a lack of desire to go riding, and always being slightly tired. Their performance levels will become very erratic; some times they will have a good day and then several very bad days.

If you train less, but more intense you have many more very good days and very few bad days…it is on those very good days that you can practice at levels that are impossible to practice at, if you are tired and riding to often.

Yeah superslow, I was in the gym once a week for 40 mins or so...just a few excercises, jim had given me a training regime- I have it printed out but not on my computer sorry...I'm sure he'll help you out- basically ~6 or so excercises to get all the main muscle groups, 10 second count down 10 second count up for between 6-12 reps. Once you get to 12 increase the weight. Jim can probably chime in on it.

In terms of definition and just looking big (not necessarily tons of strength) read some body building stuff. In high school I tried so many different training styles, for me 3 circuits of a bunch of superset excercises working the whole body was pure money. You get a lot bigger, more than you would with super slow- but not necessarily stronger, plus you need to put in a lot more time....im rambling.

superslow? jeremy was talking to me about it a little bit. jim, if you read this, could you tell me some more info on it? or maybe some superslow trainers in the baltimore/D.C. area?

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Talk to Mike Libercci. He's a personal trainer, and he knows a bit about super slow/HIT.

When I was in HS (a long time ago) I'd spend about two hours per day working out. for the big muscles (chest, lats, quads, shoulders) I'd two three sets of a max of three movements to failure and then finish the day by doing three sets of by isolating each muscle.

From my sophmore year to my senior year, I only gained about five pounds. My body fat went from 8 to 6 and I saw some pretty impressive strength gains.

Bench went from about 140 to 245
Leg press went from about 450 to almost 800
military press from 90 to 200
and I could do forty some pullups in a row.

I'm pretty suprised by how much that strength stayed with me even though I hadn't worked out in ten years.

I don't have time to go into details today, but I will try to get some info up for you over the next 3-4 days.

I am not sure who Bill the personal trainer is, he may know alot about HIT training and superslow training or he may not.

One thing for sure when it comes to learning about these types of training you want to talk to someone that uses this style of training all the time, the people that use it only some of the time DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT no matter how much they think they do. If you want to know something about any subject go to the experts that do it, not someone that doesn't do it, but "knows" about it. I am not saying Bill is in either position, just letting you know what is the best way of learning things.

Does it work??? Here are two of the latest examples from new people I have recently started training. First on is a 73 year old man he tried traditional lifting 3-4 years ago but after going 3 times a week for about 90 minutes each time he gave up because he did see hardly any improvement. This man just did his 8th work out...one per week for 8 weeks, total time under 45 minutes each time. His leg press has gone from 100 lbs to 360 lbs!!!

The second person is a very small woman that is a "runner" in her late 40's. She lifted for the last 4-5 years 3 times a week for about 90 minutes each time. She said I was her last hope, because none of the trainers could help her. In the last five years she had only been able to increase her leg press by 10 lbs. She started leg pressing 60 lbs, after only four weeks lifting once a week for under 45 minutes each time she is now leg pressing 160 lbs longer than she could do 60 lbs four weeks ago.

If this is done correctly it has never failed to produce the best results the people that I train have ever seen and there is no injuries!

Cole, check this article out at http://www.cbass.com/SEARCHOF.HTM I think you know Bear Perrin, this is an important part of his work out. If you read this carefullyyou may be surprized to see how effective this work out is compared to what most cross country people are doing. When Jeremy was 16 years old he was riding cross country only 6 hours a week and he still placed 2nd in the Pro/Experts Oregon State Championships, only Decker beat him. It is not the time but the intensity that counts the most! Also check out these success stories about athletes using this type of training http://www.cbass.com/success_stories2.htm I hope this is helpful.

Jim. I have one question. An example of mine from the other day. I was practicing touch-hops(which I'm not very good at). And I was doing alright for a while. Starting to nail them consistently. But then after a while I started getting sloppy and feel sorta sloppy. Is this what you are talking about. And If it is. Can I go work on something else like smaller things(trackstanding, stair practicing and other balance tech improving stuf) without "unlearning" things? Because although I want to get better I do ride cause it's fun. And it would suck if I had to go home after 15-30 minutes every day.

Coramoor, that is what I was talking about, and it is very likely that you can go do some easier moves using different muscles groups and be okay. The thing to look for is when the whole trend of the ride is going down hill stop. Or at least take a break. Other wise you do increase the chance of injuries and like I said actually "get worse"!

I believe for some one way would be better and for others the other way would be better. I think it is more a matter of what you like...most likely you will like the way that gives you the best increase.